April 16, 2013

Languages in the News

Community as Curriculum: Educators Work Together to Develop Activities that Explicitly Build on the Resources and Abilities that Children Bring to School

This article published by the National Council of Teachers of English presents a Canadian K- 5 public school's approach to welcoming new English language learners (ELLs) into their community. The approach is designed to make the ELLs' transition into the school as comfortable as possible through communication and methods that promote academic success. The process includes using an interpreter when speaking with parents, an initial discussion with parents and their children regarding school policies, routines, and expectations, including curriculum, using the school's Newcomers' Guide to Elementary Schools, available in Urdu as well as many other languages, classes that utilize multilingual, multicultural, and multiperspective literature, and providing opportunities for students to read, write, and speak in their first language. The authors, renowned Jim Cummins and Sandra Schecter, emphasize the language-as-resource orientation to language planning. The researchers view the development of biliteracy (additive bilingualism) as a positive influence in children's development. Sound research on bilingualism confirms that literacy skills in a student's first language (L1) provide a foundation for literacy skills in a second language (L2). Research also indicates that maintaining and developing the L1 does not impede the development of English academic skills.

The school serves an ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse student population, many of whom are first-generation immigrants to Canada. The staff adopted a model of ESL instruction during which ELLs are pulled out of other classes to spend time with the ESL teacher for 40 to 80 minutes each morning in small groups.

In the afternoons, the ESL teacher pushes into the regular classroom for two or three 40-minute periods in a 10-day cycle. The researchers collaborated with staff to conduct action research projects with the purpose of developing a better understanding of how the school could create stronger connections with the ELLs' parents. The first step involved creating a questionnaire to explore the literacy practices of the parents and to assess the extent to which they would support home–school literacy initiatives. A synthesis of the responses found that most families read to their children at least three times per week. About half read books in English and about half read books both in the L1 and English. Parents were pleased that their children's teachers took an interest in learning more about their students' backgrounds and experiences.

The researchers and teachers created bilingual book bags that the children could bring between school and home. Many factors went into the selection of the books: the cultural sensitivity of various subject matter, text with repetition, rhythm, rhyme, and positive role models from a variety of cultures. At the end of the school year, the team planned a half-day storytelling session to celebrate multicultural books and the diversity of languages in the school.

Click here to read Community as Curriculum: Educators Work Together to Develop Activities that Explicitly Build on the Resources and Abilities that Children Bring to School.

Tips and Tools

Websites

Audio Lingua

This is valuable website for those searching for free mp3 resources in French, German, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Italian, and Occitan (also known as Provençal or Languedoc, a romance language spoken in Southern France). Recordings range from 30 seconds to several minutes and are about a variety of subjects. Visitors to the site will find a large list of qualities/ attributes to choose from: male/ female, child/ teen/adult, varying levels and a variety of accents and locations.

Click to access Audio Lingua.

Education Place: Ayudas Gráficas

This website offers free and reproducible graphic organizers for the Spanish classroom. Visitors will find word webs, flow charts, 5 question charts, fact and opinion charts, Venn diagrams and thirty-two other kinds of graphic organizers.

Click to access Education Place: Ayudas Gráficas.

Apps for iPads, iPods and iPhones

WordFoto
WordFoto is an app that turns ten words or less into a work of art. Tap the camera icon to take a picture and then crop the image. Tap the words icon to use preset word lists or create a new list. Choose from eight preset styles to finish the picture. Once the work of art is created, save it to the photo library, share it on Facebook or email the image. This app costs $1.99 and is only available for iPhone, but can be used on iPads.

ShowMe
ShowMe is a free, interactive whiteboard app. Once a new project is created, users can add pictures pulled from the camera roll, take a photo or search for images on the web. Choose from seven colors to write with and use the eraser to easily remove mistakes. Tap the red circle to add voice recordings or music.

Language teachers can use this app to take pictures of student work and record students speaking the target language. Once a project is finished, tap the manage button to share it. These can be kept private, shared with the ShowMe community, shared on Facebook and Twitter or emailed to parents.

Click here for more ideas for how to use the ShowMe app.

This issue of Newsworthy was compiled by Tammy Dann. Send any comments, questions or information for future issues to her at tdann@nnell.org

Thank you to Heather Hendry, Marcela Summerville, Shanon Shreffler, and Andrea Suarez for providing the links and to Amy Murphy for providing the apps used in this issue.

Thank you to Amy Murphy, Kennedy Schultz, Sally Hood and Veronica Guevara for their work writing summaries.